Zoella’s ‘Girl Online’ comes out #1 in favourite teen books study

Zoella has just proved she’s not only queen of YouTube, but she’s ruling in teen lit as well with her first novel ‘Girl Online’.

Renaissance Learning surveyed over 700,000 secondary school students during the 2014/15 academic year for its annual study into British children’s reading habits. The results? ‘Girl Online’ topped the chart, with James Dashner’s ‘The Maze Runner’ coming in second, and ‘The House of Hades’ by Rick Riordan taking 3rd place.

However, even though these books were voted teen favourites, they weren’t most read.

Jeffrey Kinney, with 7 of his ‘Wimpy Kid’ books, came in number 1 in the most read list. Also on this list were ‘Gangsta Granny’ by David Walliams, ‘The Hunger Games’ by Suzanne Collins and ‘Charlie and the Chocolate Factory’ by Roald Dahl.

Keith Topping, professor of educational and social research at Dundee University, said, “This year’s findings reveal that, strikingly, children read their favourite books at a much higher level of difficulty and with a greater level of comprehension than those recommended to them. Clearly, this suggests a way of responding to the problem of insufficient challenge which is particularly prevalent in the secondary years. Instead of recommending books to children, teachers, librarians and parents should be finding ways to enable children to recommend books to each other.”